I think demons are only the parts of our souls that we try to cast out —  fear, anger, regret, grief. We so often separate ourselves from, well, ourselves — those pieces we think are unlovable or the truths that make us vulnerable... those emotions and truths we detach from in hopes of being “put together,” but that conversely make us whole. There have been times in my life where I’ve known self-hate better than I’ve known myself. I have no shame now in sharing this — something for so long I thought I had to hide. And I create the little things I can from a place of hope — not the yearning and nostalgic kind of hope, but a gritty kind of hope — a cliche flower-in-the-concrete-crack kind of hope, and a love I try to sustain for learning how to navigate this labyrinth we call life, and a love I try to sustain within myself. It’s an ongoing process that never ends and it’s a path full of potholes, but a while back I made the decision to try to walk onward along side all these pieces of myself, not dwelling on the past, but assembling these fragments into the mosaic of the present day... That’s joy to me.

 

I find photography to be a confessional and a means to explore our shadow-selves.